Maryland Crab Cakes

Well, maybe not real Maryland crab cakes as Bev bought a couple cans of Chicken Of The Sea Crab Claw Meat on sale and we decided to turn one of them into crab cakes using our go-to recipe from the “Once Upon A Chef” blog.  I realize that the great crab cakes are made with lump and jumbo lump crab meat, but I just refuse to pay the very high prices for them ($36 for a pound for Chicken Of The Sea Lump at Walmart).

Delicious Crab Cakes With Lump Crab Meat

Our son and UT graduate, Rhett, drove into Knoxville from his home in South Carolina to go to the UT/USC football game with some of his fraternity brothers this past weekend.  On Sunday, he and Beth came to down to our place for a short visit before heading home.

You may recall on my last post for Crab Imperial Stuffed Crappie And Shrimp that I stated “One of these days I'm going to turn loose of some of the kids inheritance and buy some jumbo lump crab meat.” 

Crab Cakes and Low Country Boil For Four

Last summer we went to an outdoor concert at some people’s home and ran into a guy that I had worked with at Alcoa but had not seen in 20 years and I promised I would get us together in 2022 after hip surgery recovery and this was finally the day.  I wanted to have a seafood medley in the air-conditioned house but “the boss” wanted to have low country boil on the dock and she balked when I suggested we could make it in the air-conditioned kitchen – “it has to be done outside on the dock.”

Unfortunately, I got so busy visiting and cooking that I took only a couple of pics.

Steak Oscar Then Crab Cakes - Both Semi-Failures

It’s hard to believe I built this meal this way but we had some asparagus in the fridge that needed to be used and Bev thought about Steak Oscar which sounded good to me.  I steamed the asparagus, nuked the crab meat just a little, and the steaks just got S&P for seasoning before cooking them reverse sear in a 225F oven then searing them in a smoking hot skillet.  I used the recipe for Easy Bearnaise Sauce from the “All Recipe” blog but I tried a short cut method by putting everything in a container and using the immersion blender to whip it up.

To assemble the dish, plate the steaks then top with asparagus, crab, and bearnaise.

Crab Fest At Almost Heaven South

A while back, I saw a TV ad for their Crabfest at Red Lobster and after going to Lobsterfest, I knew not to make that mistake again. As a side note, my dad and his wife lived in the Bradenton, Fl and with many seafood restaurants in the area, one of their favorites was Red Lobster – go figure. Anyhow, while I wasn’t about to trot off to Red Lobster, the crab fest idea stuck with me, so I decided to cook my own. I’ve posted before that, at best, I cook mediocre seafood and one of my goals is to get it into the very good realm, so I saw this as a good practice opportunity.

The three dishes that stuck in my mind were steamed king crab, pan-fried crab cakes, and crab-stuffed shrimp. The first one was pretty simple, thaw and steam the crab legs, except I added one of my frozen shrimp stock cubes to the water for some extra flavor.

While I could have used the same crab recipe for the cakes and the shrimp, I saw this as an opportunity to try two different recipes for the price of one meal. Since there were just three of us, I made half of the stuffed shrimp and three fourths of the crab cake recipe – which fit for the one pound of crab that I had. I used the $8/lb deluxe backfin crab verses the $18/lb lump – sometimes I’m a little cheap, but it was in big enough chunks to make dandy cakes.

For the crab cakes, I used Cathy’s recipe for Fire Roasted Pepper Crab Cakes from Wives With Knives. Check out her blog for the recipe and pics. I made it as Kathy wrote it and the ¾ recipe made six 3/8 of a cup sized cakes.

And for the stuffed shrimp, I used Mary’s recipe for Crab Stuffed Shrimp  from Deep South Dish. Again, check out her site for the recipe and pics. I used  twelve 15 count shrimp we had in the freezer and they were a great size for stuffing and matched just right with the stuffing amount. The only problem was they were pre-cleaned and in most cases cut too deeply for me to stuff them from the bottom as I wanted, so they didn’t have the presentation I wanted. My solution was to put them on a raised rack in hopes they would not fall over as they cooked – it worked well as they stayed stuffing side up.

We considered several side dishes, but wanted to leave maximum stomach room for seafood, and since we had lots of tomatoes and a piece of baguette, we settled on bruschetta. Bev just toasted the bread and put everything in the topping which contained tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper, then sprinkled on a little chopped basil, parsley and shredded Romano cheese. She did this first class like she does pizza, salads, and sandwiches and loads them up.  Here's my plate.

The meal was close to very good – the shrimp stock cube had a positive impact on the crab legs, the crab cakes and stuffed shrimp were outstanding as was the bruschetta. I'll definitely use these two crab recipes again. I decided to work on presentation a little and just the addition of a couple of lettuce leaves made a big difference. The only negative was I used big shrimp and they could have cooked longer – especially for Bev who likes hers DONE (daughter Wende and I scarfed ours up).  One thing I believe I can say with confidence – it was better than Red Lobster.

For you football watchers, how bout them Vols - they found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by not being able to line up 11 players on the field - at least they gave LSU more than they wanted for the whole game.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

Maryland Crab Cakes

Thanks to our Sitka Salmon Shares, in our freezer, we had four Dungeness Crab halves and half of a snow crab and I had been wanting to make crab cakes.  When we invited our friends Laurie and David over for happy hour, we thought they would make a nice light meal along with some salad, steamed asparagus, and desserts that they brought.  I started thawing the crab the previous day and that morning I assembled my picking station and went to work.

Dungeness Crab Cakes & Game Meat - Feeding Myself Suppers – Part 2

Dungeness Crab Cakes

When the freezer failed and we had to touch everything, I discovered a two year old package of Dungeness Crab that I was sure would need to be trashed, but I decided to thaw it anyway.  To my surprise the flavor was still good but it was a little tough – so I chopped it into smaller pieces.  I looked around on line and found a simple recipe for crab cakes that included everything I had on-hand except celery and I adapted it for my 10 ounces of crab to get the recipe below.

Upside Down Broiled Seafood Platter – Part 2

Since the crab cakes and onions were such a hit with the seafood meal, I thought they deserved a separate post.  But before I get to that, here is my Keto friendly breakfast the morning after the seafood meal.

A Taste Test With Flounder And Crab

Decided it was time for a food header.

After a day between so Bev could get her pizza fix, it was time to eat the second flounder filet and the other half of the crab left from the pseudo stuffed crab meal. I decided to use this as a taste testing opportunity for both the fish and the crab and made everything appetizer size.

I’ve seen several recipes on the blogs I read where potato chips of some form are used as the final breading material and I’ve wanted to give it a try using crushed Lay’s Stax (like Pringles) and for comparison I used Panko. For the flounder, I seasoned the filets with salt, pepper and Emeril’s Essence (after breading cause I forgot - what a DA), dunked into an egg wash, then into the final breading.

To fry, rather than using a none stick skillet, I decided to go with stainless and use the proper heating technique I’d learned in my online Rouxbe cooking school  – I learned how to boil an egg recently, so I’m past boiling water and on my way to chefdom :-). If you haven’t watched the pan heating video that is their demo, you really should as it’s amazing how well it works.  I got the pan hot, added Canola oil, then the fish and reduced the heat some and they slid around just like in the video.

I flipped and finished to a golden brown - the school said cook the presentation side first as it usually looks the best - then served with some simple tartar sauce that we already had.

Since I wanted to have the best chance of success, I cooked the flounder and we ate it, then I cooked the crab, for which I made another batch of crab cakes using a modified recipe from Judy at Free Crab Recipes. Hers is for Maryland crab cakes using a pound of crab, but since I was using a Cajun remoulade, I added some Old Bay and Creole seasoning and halved her recipe to get this:

Crab Cakes:

1/2 lb. crab meat
3/4 tbsp. dry bread crumbs
1 tsp chopped fresh parsley
¼ tsp Zatarain’s Creole Seasoning
¼ tsp Old Bay
1/8 tsp black pepper (changed from the original)
1/2 beaten egg (this was hard to do)
3/4 tsp ground dry mustard
1/8 tsp hot pepper sauce (I used Sriracha)

After cooling, I cleaned and reheated the stainless pan and fried some cakes naked, some with panko, and some with Stax. I didn’t give them an egg wash as they were moist enough to hold the breading.

Here’s they are out of the pan with the remoulade sauce left from the previous seafood meal and my plate.

I’d suggested a salad but Bev wanted sautéed spinach so we used it as part of the presentation. The flounder was on raw spinach which then went into the sauté.

Conclusions:

The darker brown flounder is the Panko so it obviously must be watched or the temp lowered further. My taster isn’t very sophisticated so I rely on Pat and Bev for this and they both preferred the Panko as they didn’t care for the Stax taste. Next time it will be regular potato chips vs. corn flakes, which we get on the extra crispy grouper at our favorite place on Marco Island, Fl.

We really liked the crab cake recipe and Bev said it was like eating sweet crab meat. With the more flavors in the crab mixture, we couldn’t tell any flavor difference in the two breadings, but we preferred the breaded ones as the outside of the naked ones were kind of tough. The sautéed spinach with a little shredded Romano made for a nice presentation and both it and the remoulade were a great compliment to the crab.

There was a small piece of the chocolate truffle cake left and Bev fixed it up for me.

All in all a delicious dinner and we learned a few things – what could be better – and I’d serve both of these dishes to company.

All we have left from our seafood shop-a-thon is a nice piece of salmon and another pound of crab – I can hardly wait and now that I’ve found Judy’s site for crab recipes, I’ll be looking at it hard.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by on such a dreary day – this is Wednesday, the storms are moving through, and the power was out for a while during the afternoon, as usual – I love county living.

Larry

Upside Down Broiled Seafood Platter

When I traveled to Pittsburgh, PA on business during my working days, one of my favorite restaurants was Poli’s, located a few miles east of center city in Squirrel Hill.  The restaurant opened in 1921 and closed in 2005 and when I ate there, it was always the broiled seafood platter.  It was the best I ever ate and I’ve often fantasized about being able to recreate it at home.

For this meal, I began with recipes from All Recipes and Mr. Food to get the basics – the originals can be found by clicking on the links.  I was going for something like this.

Easy Meal Like Mom Might Make

Bev had bought a box of Members Mark Frozen Crab Cakes from Sam’s Club and they were taking up space in our freezer plus our neighbors had given us some fresh picked asparagus and we had some red potatoes that needed to be cooked.  This sounded like the ingredients of an decent easy meal and one like my mom might have made – no Sam’s back then, of course.

Roasted Red Pepper Crab Quiche - No Frittata

I made a tour around the grounds yesterday and other than a few small tree limbs and some washing from the 4 1/2" rain, we seem to have made it through Wednesdays storms okay. I feel bad for those that sustained damage and especially those who lost loved ones - the planet seems to be waking up.

We made a potato crusted dish some time back and every time I mention it Bev comments that it was too bland. I’ve seen several lately on the blogs I read and began thinking about how to overcome Bev’s objection. When Katherine over at Smoky Mountain Café posted hers a while back and commented that crabmeat could be used, an ideal was born.

I remembered the crab meat I still had in the freezer from our seafood shop-a-thon, the recent crab cakes we’ve made, and the burrito I made from leftover stuffed crab, and a quiche was born. I began with a half recipe of Cathy’s Fire Roasted Pepper Crab Cakes over at Wives With Knives.

This is the crust I had planned and will make sometime, but Bev did not want the extra carbs, so we compromised on a frittata.

For the crust: (If I had made it)
3 cups frozen hash browns, thawed and drained
½ stick melted butter
½ tsp Old Bay
1/8 tsp each salt and pepper

For the filling: (I made it like this)
- 2/3 pound crabmeat
- 2 green onions, small dice
- ½ tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
- ½ tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
- ¾ teaspoons Old Bay seasoning, divided
- ¼ cup jarred roasted peppers, diced
- ¼ cup mayonnaise
- ¾ cup half and half
- 4 chopped asparagus spears – just because I had them
- 1 cup shredded cheddar
- 3 large eggs, beaten
- Several dashes of Tabasco Habanero Sauce - Bev added more to hers
- Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
In a 10” porcelin skillet with a little butter and olive oil, I sautéed the veggies, crab, herbs, and half of the Old Bay until the asparagus was a little tender.

Then I added the cheese and allowed it to begin to soften.

In a bowl I whisked together the remaining ingredients and poured them over the items in the pan and stirred around for a couple of minutes to get things evenly distributed.

I reduced the heat to low and cooked until the bottom was set, then put it under the broiler to finish.  Here's the finished product after the addition of just a little grated parmesan.

It was roll your eyes back delicious and Bev whipped up a salad using our garden salad greens, radishes, spinach, and green onion plus some other stuff and topped it with homemade 1000 Island and it was just about as good. 

Real men definitely eat quiche (or fritatta), even for supper - here's my plate.

Bev loved it and I'm so happy to be moving beyond being just a recipe follower - the next time I'll make individual ones and put a potato crust in mine.  Also, it was almost too moist so I'll reduce the milk to 1/2 cup.  Tune in a few days for the rest of the pound of crab.

I know I'm in the minority, but I'm sure glad this wedding is over.  I don't know whether the media wore me out more with it or the Charlie Sheen debacle :-).

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:  Taters and Eggs

Larry

Crab Imperial Stuffed Crappie And Shrimp

I’ve been wanting to make crab stuffed fish for some time and when I saw a recent recipe for stuffed flounder I decided now was a good time but using crappie rather than flounder.  I used a combination of several recipes to come up with the one below.  I once again used canned Chicken Of The Sea Crab Claw Meat.

Smoked Salmon Cakes

From yesterdays comments - The garden is only 35' x 90' so not that big.

I still had a couple of pieces of smoked salmon in the freezer left from BBQ day and I decided to see how they would work as salmon patties. I looked at several recipes and they all called for either canned or barely cooked fish, but mine was already fully cooked. I’d saved a recipe for tuna cakes which used mashed potatoes rather than bread crumbs as the filler and I thought the moisture in the potatoes would work better with this salmon, plus it was different and I’ve never had it. So I used the salmon to tuna ratio from this recipe, but the spices typical of salmon cakes.

I found a recipe for salmon cakes by Ina Garten, who’s cooking really appeals to me, and since it had several of the same ingredients as in my salmon spread, I decided to go with it.

SALMON CAKES
Adapted from Ina Garten

Ingredients
12 oz smoked salmon, rough chopped (Ina's recipe called for 8oz, but I had 12)
Good olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (no salt if using salted butter)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup small-diced red onion 
1 1/2 cups small-diced celery
1/2 cup small-diced red bell pepper
1/2 cup small-diced yellow bell pepper
1/4 cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon capers, drained
1/4 teaspoon hot sauce (I used Tabasco)
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons crab boil seasoning (I used Zaterain's Pro Boil)
1 pound red potatoes, boiled, mashed with skin on, cooled to room temperature
1/2 cup good mayonnaise (I’ve switched from Hellman’s to Duke’s after 60 years)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup cornmeal flour

Directions
Place 2 tablespoons of the butter, 2 tablespoons olive oil, the onion, celery, red and yellow bell peppers, parsley, capers, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, crab boil seasoning, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in a large saute pan over medium-low heat and cook until the vegetables are soft, approximately 15 to 20 minutes. Cool to room temperature.

Add the mashed potatoes, mayonnaise, mustard, and eggs to a large bowl and mix well.

Add the vegetable mixture and corn flour and mix well. 

After tasting, I decided I had some very good potato pancakes without the salmon.

Add the chilled salmon to the bowl and mix to get the desired size of salmon pieces. 

Cover and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Shape into 1/4 - 1/3 cup) cakes.

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. In batches, add the salmon cakes and fry for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until browned. Drain on paper towels; keep them warm in a preheated 250 degree F oven and serve hot.

While I like to use a knife and cutting board, when a recipe calls for quite a bit of finely diced items, Bev has convinced me to use the food processor, and it worked perfectly for this.

I didn't time the veggie saute but cooked them until most of the liquid was gone.  When I was prepping them, Bev asked how much salmon I had, but they cooked down to not very much, but packed with flavor.

Before I cooked the cakes, I experimented with the technique for getting the pan to the perfect temp as shown on the video from Rouxbe Online Cooking that Chris from Nibble Me This posted recently. What a neat liitle proceess - it did just as the video showed and after talking with Chris, I signed up for the school.

I heated the pan per the instructions then added my olive oil and butter (melted), then I added the cakes and lowered the flame just a little. Here they are after flipping.  As you can see I had a problem with 3 of them - next time I'll use 1/2 cup of flour and make them a little thicker.  Also, I needed to lower the heat a little more, but they did slide around in the skillet as the video said they should.

We sided it with some spaghetti squash casserole that Bev invented the night before from some things on hand that included some mini Italian sausage meatballs, diced tomatoes, Rotel, tomato paste, onions, peppers celery, spices, pepper jack and parmesan cheese.

Here's my plate. I'm not a big fan of spaghetti squash, but I thought this was very good.  I considered a sauce for the salmon cakes, but they had so much flavor, I ate them naked - they were very good even though a little too brown.

Most fish cake recipes call for as little filler as possible, so these might be more accutately called Smoked Salmon Potato Cakes.  I like the fact that I have enough left for another complete meal plus some extra fried ones from this meal - I think I feel some breakfast dishes coming on.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by.

Larry

A Day trip To Annapolis

THANKS TO ALL WHO HAVE SERVED IN OUR MILITARY

Eric and Ann had been wanting to drive down to Annapolis and since neither Bev nor I had been there, we thought it would be a fun thing to do while visiting with them.  In case you’re unfamiliar with the town, it’s the capital of Maryland, county seat of Anne Arundel  County, home of the US Naval Academy & St. John's College, capital of the United States from 1783-1784, sailing capital of the world, and all around quaint little town with a population of just 38,000+ situated on the Chesapeake Bay. 

And the fascinating part is that it’s all within easy walking distance, although they do have a continuously running shuttle system that helps with the further away parking garages.  This is a winter shot from the web with church circle bottom center, the state capital upper center and the govenors mansion between them on the left.

This is my shot of Main Street (click here for map) which runs from church circle in the center of town down to the water at the City Dock and it is made up of nice shops and good sounding restaurants.

A shot back up the hill from the web.

It is a clean and enjoyable place to visit and I especially enjoyed seeing the Midshipmen and women walked around in their white uniforms with their crisply ironed lines and everything just so – a real pleasant contrast to the look of most college students.

This is the dock area at the bottom of the hill.

Since we’d had a big breakfast, we decided on a mid-afternoon meal at the well-known and obviously popular Jimmy Cantler’s Riverside Inn located a couple of miles east of town on the water. 

The restaurant appears to have been a home that was turned into a restaurant and we had to wait about an hour to get a seat - at least we could wait down by the water in the shade and watch them sort the crabs.

The inside dining area was a large room with picnic tables lined up – sorry about the blur. 

Since it was well known and very busy, we were expecting outstanding food and knew it would be pricy, but while the second part was true, Bev and I were very disappointed with the food while Ann and Eric enjoyed theirs – Bev had a lump crabmeat sandwich. 

For $20, I got two smaller than expected deep fried Maryland backfin crab cakes, French fries, and slaw.  The slaw and fries were both good (I don’t think either were homemade) but I believe we make much better crab cakes.  I might have expected disappointment had I ordered BBQ ribs from a crab house, but not when getting a crab dish.

I won’t cover the rest of the meals but would sure not go there again and I was surprised it was so popular – part of the crowd may have been due to the recent opening of crab season and they served many trays of them at $65/dozen – the couple beside us was having them and advised the price was a bit steep.

In spite of the meal experience, it was still a very nice way to spend an afternoon and save for knee pain and a pretty hot day, I would like to have spent more time walking around Annapolis, including the USNA - I would definitely go back, but on a cooler day and maybe during the week.

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:  Bojangles Leftovers For Breakfast

Two years ago: Breakfast From The Frig

Larry

5/19/12  event date

Deviled Crab For Breakfast

One of my favorite parts of a restaurant seafood platter is the crab shell stuffed with deviled crab and I love crab cakes so when I saw some canned crabmeat on a recent store trip, I decided to make some deviled crab.  I wanted to make a big batch but since I’m cheap, I bought just a pound of $20/lb crab meat and a pound of $3/lb genuine imitation crabmeat.  Since Bev thought it was not crabby enough, I won’t bother to post the recipe but I made five individual servings and baked them but I forgot the pics.

After the five servings for supper, I still had a bunch left and decided to make it into cakes for breakfast and I used an English muffin sized ring to shape them.

Salmon Cakes

I’d seen this recipe when Mary at One Perfect Bite published it and put it on my try-list then Diane at Voice In The Garden published it, but I was ready.  Just the previous night, we had grilled a whole sockeye salmon filet and ate less than half so we had the remainder lounging around in the fridge awaiting this recipe.

Since we had more than enough, we invited Bev’s sister and neighbor Pat to join us for dinner on the dock.

The recipe is available on the other sites, but I decided to post the ingredients list to show how we made it (in parenthesis ) – joint effort between Bev and I.  First I had 10 oz of salmon, so I scaled everything up to match.

1/2 pound fresh salmon (10 oz.)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (5 tbsp salted butter)

¾ cup small-diced red onion (1 cup of our sweet white onion)

1 ½ cups small-diced celery (1 ¾ cups)

½ cup small-diced red bell pepper (5/8 cup of our Sante Fe Chili)

½ cup small-diced yellow bell pepper (5/8 cup of our Sante Fe Chili)

¼ cup minced fresh flat-leaf parsley (1/3 cup)

1 tablespoon capers, drained (1 ¼ tbsp.)

¼ teaspoon hot sauce (1/3 tsp)

½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (5/8 tsp)

1 ½ teaspoons crab boil seasoning (1 tsp Zatarains Pro Boil)

3 slices stale bread, crusts removed (1 cup store bought bread crumbs)

½ cup good mayonnaise (5/8 cup Dukes)

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (2 ½ tsp)

2 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten (3 eggs)

½ tsp salt (zero)

½ tsp black pepper (1/2 tsp)

Bev did the veggie prep by removing the ribs and seeds from the peppers then chopping everything together in the food processor and it made them just right.  Since my salmon already had a good coat of Emeril’s Essence on it, I reduced the crab boil addition.  Also since the crab boil was real salty, I decided to wait until the veggies were done to add salt and they didn’t need any, then I tasted again after mixing everything and it still required no additional salt. I went ahead with a third egg, but then I ended up with a mix that was too wet, so I’ll stick with 2 next time.  We just used the veggies we had from the garden and they all worked fine so we were able to make the dish without a trip to the store.

Before the entree, we began the meal with a Caprese Salad using a recipe from Pioneer Woman via tastykitchen.com.

We've had this a few times and although it was tasty, we like other salads much better.  While the whole basil leafs make for a nice presentation, I believe it would be tastier and easier to eat to chiffanade the basil and build as a tomato slice-basil-cheese then repeat ending with whole basil like Bev did. 

Not able to pass up a taste test opportunity, I cooked one  cake with a Panko coating and one without then I added some remoulade to mine again for a taste test.  Here’s my plate with included some Blue Ribbon green beans cooked with a ham hock and some of our potatoes.

Just as the previous posters found, we all thought the crab cakes were delicious - even Bev who had said earlier that they contained too much other stuff that would overwhelm the salmon.  I liked them equally well with or without the sauce.  This is now the go-to recipe for salmon cakes and sure beats the canned salmon, oats, egg, and onion, topped with ketchup, version I grew up on.  With three strong endorsements now, you may want to give these a try if you like salmon cakes.

Since we have varieties of blueberries that bear at staggered times, we are still getting lots so Bev decided to whip up a little dessert of blueberry turnovers.  She used this recipe from Giada Di Laurentis.
Blueberry and Mascarpone Turnovers

Ingredients

1/2 cup mascarpone cheese, at room temperature

2 tablespoons sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

1/2 teaspoon cornstarch

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1/3 cup fresh or frozen and thawed blueberries (Bev used 1/2 cup)

2 (9-inch) refrigerated pie crusts (Bev used 1 sheet of refrigerated pie dough)

1 egg, beaten

Vegetable oil, for frying

Directions

Special equipment: a 3 1/2-inch round cookie cutter

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together the cheese, sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and lemon zest until smooth. Stir in the blueberries.

Using a 3 1/2-inch round cookie cutter, cut the pie dough into 12 circles. Place the dough on the prepared baking sheet. Using a pastry brush, lightly brush the edges of the dough with the beaten egg. Place about 1 1/2 teaspoons of the cheese mixture in the center of the dough. Fold the dough in half to enclose the filling and pinch the edges to seal. Using the tines of a fork, gently crimp the sealed edges. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.

While the pastry is chilling: In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, pour enough oil to fill the pan about a third of the way. Heat over medium heat until a deep-frying thermometer inserted in the oil reaches 375 degrees F. (If you don't have a thermometer a cube of bread will brown in about 3 minutes.) Fry the turnovers for 1 to 1 1/2 minutes until golden. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with sugar while still hot. Cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.

I was cooking in the semi dark and had no device to tell me the oil temp so I’m not sure what it was but here they are cooking on the grill side burner.  Note the dark spot in the center from laying on the pan bottom – next time I’ll deep fry they to eliminate that.

Rather than let them cool, we topped with some good vanilla ice cream let over from our dock dinner party and they were very good.

Just another nice evening at the dock and I only had to go for two swims to cool off although the water temp feels the warmest I’ve ever seen it – more like diving into a warm bath.  It takes a dive down about 5’ to hit some cooler water.

All photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

One year ago:   A BBQ Send-Off

Larry